


Sympathetic Magic

by faithfulcynic



Category: Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Humor, Magic, Pregnancy, Siblings, Synesthesia, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithfulcynic/pseuds/faithfulcynic
Summary: The thing about curses was that you couldn’t always predict how they would manifest. That any man who loved an Owens woman would surely die became quickly understood; the less obvious consequence was that the number of boys born to the Owens family over the years became fewer and farther between.Years later, a broom drops at Gillian's feet. Company's coming.





	Sympathetic Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescent_gaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescent_gaia/gifts).



> I tried to get most of the ideas from your request letter in here. Just as an FYI, I got a chance to write Practical Magic at Yuletide last year, so it only seemed natural to have this story become a part of the same series. The only things you really need to know from that one going into this are that the house they live in has a mind of its own, Aunt Frances and the House get into interior decorating wars from time to time, and John is an OC love interest for Jet. Hope you enjoy and Merry Christmas!!

The sunlight coming through from the window behind Gillian’s bed was faint but enough to wake her. She groaned and pulled her blankets over her head, trying to block out the cold morning air and what was sure to be another day of snowdrifts and slate gray sky. Gillian sighed. One of the things she hadn’t missed about home was winter; in all her traveling, attempting to escape the curse of a dead woman, Gillian had at least always found places that were warm. But now she was home again and free of the curse but left with an uncertain future. Which was _freezing._

Gillian curled herself into a tighter ball. She didn’t want to feel so listless and untethered, but she supposed it was just her turn. Everyone she had ever known had gone through some version of the ‘What do I want in life’ phase, but Gillian had always been the exception; she’d known what she’d wanted since she was a young girl: a place where she wasn’t hated or feared, a love that was strong enough to kill for, a life of fun and unpredictability, and rocking chairs on the porch with Sally when they were both old and crabby. 

Now Jimmy was dead and the curse was broken and while she wasn’t unhappy it was the first time in Gillian’s life that she wasn’t sure of what to do or what she really wanted. 

No, that wasn’t quite true. What she wanted was a cigarette.

Like ripping off a Band-Aid, Gillian threw back the covers, practically hopped over to her dresser, and pulled on one of her favorite oversized sweaters before rummaging around for some long wool socks. Yes, it was definitely time for a cigarette. The girls would be at school, Sally at work, and Aunt Jet would still be asleep. Gillian paused. She could just hear Aunt Frances arguing with the House again and she grinned. Perfect. She’d have the kitchen to herself. Gillian left her room and headed towards the stairs. A cigarette and some strong coff -

The broom dropped at her feet.

Gillian stopped mid-stride, wind-milling her arms for balance before she could finally step back. Everyone knew a broom falling meant company was coming, but to step over one was just asking for trouble and Gillian had had enough trouble to last her a lifetime, thank you very much. She knelt to pick up the broom and carefully set it against the wall. They would definitely see Gary and John today, maybe even Linda or Carla from work, but she doubted the broom would have fallen for people they saw every day. 

Gillian shrugged and started to head downstairs again. Some of Aunt Jet’s strawberry-rhubarb pie, some coffee, and a cig-

A loud crash came from behind her and Gillian jumped. She turned to find the broom had fallen again, this time its handle pointing down the hall. Gillian eyed the broom warily and began to step lightly towards stairs, but the House made a loud groaning noise and its lights began to flicker. 

Gillian sighed. She had managed to stay on the House’s good side during Aunt Frances’ home renovation war and so she put her hand on her hip and huffed but waved at the broom. “All right, okay. Have it your way.”

The broom slowly swirled to standing and began sweeping its way towards the end of the hall. Gillian followed, wishing she had just stayed in bed. It stopped in front of the door to the right, tapping against the wall lightly with its handle to drive home the point. Gillian eyed the door with a frown. It was the room they used for extra storage – for ritual supplies, for trunks filled with old clothing and mementos (the green trunk with REGINA written across it in a childish scrawl always caught her eye), for _all_ of Sally’s old homework and report cards (Gillian had burned hers in a cathartic cleansing ritual right after high school), and other odds and ends such as the children’s attempt at homemade tarot cards, antique Victorian furniture, stacks of Aunt Francis’ interior decorating magazines, and Gillian’s collection of souvenir shot glasses. 

The lighting was also not especially great and Gillian, who had also just watched Scream, could just picture the broom’s “guest” killing her and stuffing her dead body in one of the old steamer trunks. 

Gillian touched her tigerseye briefly before opening the door slowly, then pushed it open further, stood in the doorway, and stared. 

Everything had been pushed to the sides of the room, leaving a circle of wood floor with a perfect antique bassinet at its center. The bassinet was white, wooden, and appeared to have thrown up several yards of white silk bunting and every piece of sport paraphernalia to be found on the East Coast. Piled high inside the basket were footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and soccer cleats. She could also see a letterman jacket, two bowling pins, some badminton birdies, an old dog-chewed Frisbee, and even a few empty Gatorade bottles. Several team pennants were wrapped around the cradle and a collection of plastic action figures and dinosaurs were either planning their assault on the bassinet or had been attacked and defeated by the rainbow army of marbles that were spilled out on the floor. 

Gillian was confused at first but then she remembered Sally telling her about the House offering the girls similar (if less extravagant) cradles at their birth and an old family story about the Aunts’ mother receiving a bed fashioned after Princess Louise’s cradle, which was later destroyed in the Decorating War of 1978. It could only mean that the House had assembled this cradle for a new Owens baby and since there was only one member of the family with a boyfriend and a weekly date night …

“Way to go, Sal,” Gillian said with a smirk. The House shook the room’s only window slightly, as if tapping its heel impatiently and she started. “Oh, yeah … it’s, uh, great. Really impressive.”

It was also certainly the most aggressively masculine cradle she had ever seen. All that was missing was a few cigars, a good dousing of some cheap cologne, and the color blue, maybe even-

Gillian froze, her eyes going wide. Masculine. Blue.

Boy. 

A baby _boy._

“Oh, shit,” Gillian said.

****

In a moment of despair, Maria Owens had cast a spell upon herself so that she would never again feel the agony of love; in her bitterness that spell had turned into a curse. 

The thing about curses was that you couldn’t always predict how they would manifest. That any man who loved an Owens woman would surely die became quickly understood; the less obvious consequence was that the number of boys born to the Owens family over the years became fewer and farther between. In fact their House had never even seen an Owens boy; the last one had been born sometime in the late 1700’s, well before the House had been constructed which was why she had probably gone a little overboard with the bassinet. The few Owens boys of the past had gone on to live fairly decent lives (with the exception of Thaddeus Owens who had not been as lucky on the scaffold as Maria), but they never had any children. 

And there was the matter of their magic.

Morris Owens had had the power of dream walking; he had been able to enter into anyone’s dreams and either alter or influence them … but only on the night of a green corn moon. Levi Owens had been a banshee, able to herald the dead, but was otherwise mute. It was said that Will Owens could scry anything in the state; there were no side effects except maybe alienating him from the rest of the community, but that was true of any Owens witch. Even poor Thaddeus Owens had been born with a powerful transmutation power but he had been unable to control it very well; one his more infamous mistakes – changing all of the tavern’s ale into goat’s milk - had no doubt been a deciding factor in his trial. 

The magic of the Owens men was strong but unpredictable and it was strange to think that there would soon be a boy in their House. She wondered what that could possibly mean for the future. She wondered what her sister would think.

****

Sally, predictably, freaked out. 

Gillian smirked a little as she watched her sister alternate between covering her mouth and flailing her arms but finally took pity on her. “Okay, time to calm down and just breathe. Just some nice – _no, Sal,_ not deep breaths, just regular even breaths.” 

Sally’s eyes were wide. “But what does it mean? Does the curse still affect him? Do you think –“

“Shush, shush …

“What if his power is too strong? What if –“

“No, honey, just stay calm.”

“Thaddeus –“

“He’s not going to be like that. Now you need to just breathe, okay? Inhale, exhale. That’s good. See? This isn’t anything we can’t handle,” Gillian said, glossing over the fact the last thing they had tried to handle had been her psychopathic dead boyfriend. Sally stopped fidgeting long enough to shoot her a look and Gillian cleared her throat. “I mean, I mean, it’s just a baby, right?”

****

Nine months later and Gillian was still uncertain about her future, being haunted by four strange noises, and was about ninety percent sure she never wanted to have children. 

It had started out familiar enough. When Sally had been pregnant before with the girls, Gillian had occasionally had some sympathetic back pain, a few aggravating nights of restless legs, and sometimes a sudden craving for anything on the mid to upper range of the Scoville pepper scale. Gillian had supposed that by being home, and therefore closer to her sister, that these reactions might be even stronger this time around, so she had worked out a battle plan which included hot water bottles, nighttime stretches, a strict ‘no spicy food just because Sal is hungry rule’, and Aunt Frances’ marshmallow root tea for when Gillian broke that rule. 

As expected, Gillian woke one night with an intense desire for something spicy and had snuck downstairs and eaten some leftover Buffalo wings. Less expected was when Gillian had taken a bite of a wing and tasted the color blue.

If someone would have asked her before what color Buffalo wings tasted like, Gillian would have naturally said orange - the bright traffic cone orange of a Buffalo wing. But what she tasted was blue, specifically the blue hour of last October when they had jumped from the House and floated down with their black umbrellas in hand. Another bite had yielded the pale turquoise from the pool at one of her friend's homes in L.A., rippling to white under a hot sun. Having grown up in a magical household, Gillian hadn't panicked, but she had woken up Sally, which turned out to be a mistake because that had led towards everyone in the house waking up and then a two hour taste test game of "What Color Will Gillian Taste Next?" Brownies had turned out to taste like the velvet green of her favorite slip dress, coffee like the fluffy white angel wings they wore as children just because they felt like it. Chocolate pie had been the sleek black of her childhood cat, Mischief, and the cucumber sandwiches like the frosty yellow of a pitcher of midnight margaritas. Gillian had definitely needed the marshmallow root tea afterwards. 

The taste-to-color spell went away after a few days, and thank God for that because it had started to switch from color into patterns and Gillian wasn't sure she wanted to know what paisley tasted like. But a couple of months later, Gillian had picked up a bottle of tangerine oil at Verbena and had nearly dropped it because the bitter essence of nightshade leaves had suddenly infused the air instead. Later that day, the door handle to the house had opened up to the scent of car leather and burnt silver, and that evening the water running over her hands as she washed the dishes had brought the clear smell of rainwater impacting wet earth and decay.

The strangest thing about all of this was that everyone else was fine; Gillian seemed to be the only one affected. Even Sally wasn’t experiencing her usual pregnancy symptoms which Gillian thought was unreasonably unfair.

“I think Gary Junior hates me,” Gillian had told her sister the following week, after a particularly long day of touch-to-smell incidents which had included the scent of her mother’s lemon shampoo and Jimmy’s old musty paperback collection. 

“We’re not calling him that,” Sally had replied.

“Why not?” Gary had asked with an easy smile that showed he wasn’t serious. He and Sally had exchanged one of those sweet looks that couples sometimes shared; Gillian had rolled her eyes. 

“Thaddeus is a good name,” Gillian had muttered.

****

Like the taste spell, the touch-to-smell sensation eventually went away but now, nine months into Sally’s pregnancy, Gillian was hearing things. Of all the things she’d experienced over the past months, this was what baffled Gillian the most and had her a little concerned; she had understood that the color and smells were associated with her memories, but what Gillian heard now had no meaning to her – a clinking sound, a phone ringing, a song being hummed, the shuffling of footsteps. She could be walking into a room, standing still outside, laying on her bed with two pillows pushed over her head and something would trigger the sounds again, just clinking, a phone, humming, and the shuffling footsteps over and over again, all audible enough to understand what they were but just vague enough to not understand what they meant. 

Something clinking together loudly.

A phone ringing suddenly.

A song hummed softly.

The shuffling of footsteps.

“Look, kid,” Gillian whispered, raising a warning finger at Sally’s belly when her sister was asleep. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove-“

“I don’t think he can answer you just yet,” Aunt Frances said from the doorway. 

Gillian jumped and blushed. Her aunt smiled and nodded towards the kitchen where she made them both some tea. It was another cold day, but the sun was bright and the House seemed to settle comfortably around them; Aunt Frances and the House had resolved their dispute months ago but occasionally put on a show for the sake of Aunt Jet and John, who had finally asked Jet out on a date last week. Gillian was going to make a joke about it, but Aunt Frances gave Gillian one of her patented ‘don’t try and sell me any bullshit’ looks and Gillian deflated. “I just don’t get it. What does he _want_?”

Aunt Frances laughed. “He’s a baby, Gilly-bean. I don’t think he’s got that worked out yet.”

“Well, then why me?” Gillian asked, exasperated. “Why do I keep getting all of his spells?”

“Maybe you’re the one who needs them most.” Her aunt shrugged. “Or maybe not. The magic of Owens men has never been the most straightforward. Maybe you’re just more susceptible.” She took a sip of her tea. “Does it have to have meaning?”

Gillian frowned. “I thought it did. The memories before, well, some were pleasant and some were really not, but at least I knew what they were.”

Aunt Frances took another sip of her tea and then full on smirked. “Ah.”

“What?”

Her aunt’s eyes widened in what she thought was her most truthful and guileless expression; Gillian and Sally had learned early on that Aunt Frances was a terrible liar. It was her turn to drop a ‘no bullshit’ look and her aunt smiled. “It’s nothing, only that you and Jetty seem to have the same problem – a fear of the unknown.”

“Everyone’s afraid of that,” Gillian retorted.

“Some more than others.”

Gillian harrumphed but then it was her turn to grin. “You know after everything’s settled with Aunt Jet who’s next right?” The House was silent, which was practically whistling innocently, and the older woman pulled a horrified face. She raised her mug and pointed with it. “No love spells!”

Gillian laughed and raised her own mug. “No love spells,” she said and without thinking about it they clinked their cups together in agreement. The sound seemed to magnify, banging loudly within her head, or maybe it was just her heartbeat suddenly picking up. In either case Gillian froze and Aunt Frances frowned. 

“What is it?”

Gillian shook her head, the sound still echoing loudly in her ears, and then looked at the phone about five seconds before it rang.

****

Gary, though off duty, had broken up a fight between two men at the market and hard received a black eye and a small cut needing stitches for his trouble. After Sally and Gillian had arrived at the hospital and checked on Gary, Sally had given the two men hell while somehow also insinuating that she'd turn them into toads. 

And then her water had broke. Six hours later Gillian walked into their room to find her sister fast asleep and Gary humming softly to his newborn son. 

Gillian sighed in relief. "What is that song? It's been driving me crazy."

"Proud Mary," Gary said with a goofy grin, then blinked. "What?"

"Nothing," Gillian said with a smile. Later, when both parents were snoring in an adorable heap on the hospital bed, Gillian looked at the baby. He opened a pair of sleepy eyes, one green and one blue, of course - and then closed them. 

“Hi, Teddy,” she said. “Thanks for trying to show me this moment.”

The baby opened his eyes again and Gillian was reminded of something she had once told Kylie. Something about love and spinning. The air had been sweet with maple syrup and bitter with the failure of Jimmy Angelou. And even though Gillian had been talking about falling in love, the moment itself reminded her more of family and friends and the possibility of a hopeful future.

And really that was as good a start as any. 

Gillian picked up the baby and cradled him to her, slowly spinning around the room, and smiled as her feet shuffled across the floor.


End file.
